Learn more about El fin del mundo y un despiadado pais de las maravillas/ Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World:

Two parallel stories developed in evocative scenarios: one in a mysterious walled city, the other in Tokyo, in a not too distant future. In the first one, the narrator, unnamed, is deprived of his shadow, his memories and dreams, forced to read dreams among people with strange psychic shortcomings and unicorns whose fur turns golden in winter. The second one, the narrator, whose name is also unknown, is a computer of refined tastes who works in an institution faced with another organization no less sinister in a war for control of information.

From the Publisher:"Two parallel stories developed in evocative scenarios: one in a mysterious walled city, the other in Tokyo, in a not too distant future. In the first one, the narrator, unnamed, is deprived of his shadow, his memories and dreams, forced to read dreams among people with strange psychic shortcomings and unicorns whose fur turns golden in winter. The second one, the narrator, whose name is also unknown, is a computer of refined tastes who works in an institution faced with another organization no less sinister in a war for control of information."

Author Bio

Haruki Murakami

The son of a literature teacher, Murakami learned English in school and grew up with American fiction. His first novel was published in 1970. He graduated from Waseda University in 1973, with a degree in drama, after which he managed a jazz and coffee shop. With the publication of his novel NORWEGIAN WOOD, Murakami became a cult phenomenon in Japan. He has lived all over the world, including Rome, Athens, and a Greek island, as well as spending four years at Princeton as a visiting fellow, where he wrote THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE. Murakami's books are set in Japan, but they are infused with the urban, eclectic, Western culture he has absorbed all his life.